GOP to Romney: Win the future

Republican strategists and outside groups, concerned by Mitt Romney’s slide in the polls, have begun nudging the GOP presidential nominee to adopt a more assertive and upbeat message about the future.

Romney’s persistent struggles in the presidential race have led members of his party to question one of the fundamental assumptions of his campaign: that voters simply will not vote to reelect a president who has presided over years of 8-plus percent unemployment. The latest round of swing state polling Wednesday from The New York Times, CBS News and Quinnipiac University showed Romney trailing President Barack Obama by 9 points in Florida, 10 points in Ohio and 12 points in Pennsylvania — margins that seem exaggerated to operatives on both sides of the 2012 race, but that highlight Romney’s surprising underdog position.

With pressure mounting on Romney to change the campaign’s arc, Republican strategists outside the Romney headquarters in Boston have begun to push the party’s message in a more future-oriented direction, aimed less at emphasizing Obama’s economic failures over the past four years than on the stakes for the future.

Two heavily funded conservative outside groups, American Crossroads and Americans for Job Security, have launched major ad campaigns over the past week focused on the consequences of a second Obama term. Last week, Crossroads put $8.3 million behind ads featuring business owners predicting that if Obama “has four more years, I don’t think we’re gonna want to see what it looks like.”

In its first ad of the 2012 presidential election, AJS warned voters Wednesday: “The future is getting worse under Obama.” A strategist for the group described the $8.1 million campaign as pushback on Democratic confidence that they “own the debate about the future.”

Veteran GOP pollster David Winston described his party’s messaging challenge as a two-part exercise.

“The first part is looking at the future and the trajectory the present policies are putting us on as we look toward the future,” Winston said. “That trajectory is pretty grim. The other half is, Republicans have to show: what is the trajectory we’re talking about in terms of our policies?”

Winston, a top adviser to House Republicans, sent ripples through Washington earlier this week when he released a survey asking voters which question is more important in deciding their vote: “whether you were better off than you were four years ago” or “whether you believe things will get better in the future?”

The results were overwhelming: 77 percent of respondents said they were more focused on the future, while 18 percent said the past four years would be more important in deciding their vote.